A lot has been written about what NOT to say to someone who has just lost a pregnancy. Goodness knows I’ve read variations on that post many times, on various infertility blogs.

But now I’m getting them said at me, and PH is hearing them a lot at work.

And it’s funny, because all those bloggers are right, they are very unhelpful things to say, and they can be hurtful to hear. PH especially gets angry when he hears them, which is unfortunate because his workplace is being much worse about this whole situation than mine is.

I try to take them in the spirit with which they are offered, and ignore the actual words.

I know that the person saying these things is trying to be sympathetic, trying to make me feel better. So I try to shut out the hurt, because the words DO hurt, and just appreciate the sentiment.

Because the thing is, most of those things that people shouldn’t say but do… are TRUE.

I try to remind PH of this when someone comes out with one. “We’ve said that to each other, remember?” and he’ll grudgingly say “yeah…”

But being true does not make something helpful.

For example, here are some common platitudes that always show up on those “things not to say” lists, and which PH and I have both had to hear many times:

As ardent a behaviorist as I am, watching Owl’s speech develop has really demonstrated to me the limitations of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior. I am not a Noam Chomsky fan, but I have to say that his idea of an innate language mechanism has some real evidence behind it.

I learned this stuff in Psycholinguistics, but it’s fascinating watching it develop in a human right in front of me.

For one thing, it’s clear that Owl’s language is not simply imitative. Personal preference is a major factor.

For example, Perfect Husband and I always call trains “trains” and Owl uses the word correctly. However, he prefers to call his own toy trains “choo-choos”, a term he picked up at daycare and clearly has a personal preference for.

PH and I have never rewarded his use of the term, and he knows that his “choo-choos” are trains. He just likes saying “choo-choos”.

Choo-choos!

Owl has several words like that;Words that he has latched on to and chooses to use even though they aren’t terms that PH and I use.

Like, we always call his daycare “school” but he refers to it exclusively with a made-up name which is a combination of his Daycare Lady’s name and his favourite Helper’s name.

And his language structure is clearly not imitative.

He understands our sentences but his own constructs are unique and don’t follow English grammar rules.

The most obvious example is also the most common: the way he says that he likes things. He likes to tell us what he likes, often announcing it happily quite out of the blue.

He always says “my like it,” and then names the thing he likes.

“My like it! Milk.”

“My like it! Food.”

“My like it! Music.”

Perfect Husband and I have never said a sentence that way, and I am sure that the ladies at his daycare don’t phrase things that way either. It’s just HIS way.

Speaking of odd phrasings, his use of pronouns is interesting to observe, too.

He understands “me” vs “you”.

If I refer to “you” he knows that I mean him, but he doesn’t use “you” productively in speech yet, except in canned expressions like “thank you.” Nor does he use “he” or “she”. He still uses name labels.

“Dat Mommy’s water”

“Dat boy’s car.”

But he does use “me” and “mine” correctly.

“Daddy, help me, please!”

“Dat mine!”

Instead of “I”, though, he also uses “my”.

“My do it myself.”

“My no like it, dat one.”

I don’t know if he has simply made a port manteau of “me” and “I” or if he mishears us when we say “I”.

Most of my experience with teaching and training beings whose brains are smaller than mine has been with animals. Furthermore, in most scenarios Owl acts and responds very much like a dog and so I treat him very similarly most of the time.

I use redirection, positive reinforcement, a high-pitched, encouraging tone when I deal with him, and it seems to work. He responds well to praise, touch, and food rewards. He likes to fetch.

He’s a puppy!

So I am amused and delighted when Owl displays human-like abilities that are beyond the grasp of the dogs I have worked with.

Like when he was 14 months old and I realized that he understood that he was looking at himself in the mirror.

Hi, me!

I pointed to his reflection and said “who’s that?” and he pointed to himself! To test his understanding, I secretly placed a banana sticker in his hair and showed him his reflection. Sure enough, his hand crept up to his hair while a perplexed look appeared on his face.

Dogs would NOT get that.

Also, I am constantly surprised by not only the extent to which he imitates us, but the extent to which he understands what he is imitating. Like at Hallowe’en, when he had just learned to walk, and he spotted a candy wrapper on the ground. He picked it up and toddled over to the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and proceeded to try and open it to throw away the wrapper.

A dog can learn to put something in the garbage if you teach him, but it would never occur to him to see something like a wrapper, identify it as garbage, and then try to throw it away himself. Hypothetically you could teach a dog to recognize certain things are garbage to be thrown away, but it would be a lot of work.

Your average dog does not watch you do something, intuit the intent behind your action, and then try to do it himself.

Owl does this every day.

I'll just slip these on...

Then there are other things that I almost don’t notice until I think about them.

For example, every morning I ask him to choose his footwear for the day. He can pick his wading boots, or his little doc-martin style boots. No matter which he chooses, he always brings me a matching pair. He has never brought me, say, one wader and one doc martin.

It’s the same thing when he brings me my own footwear (yes, I get my baby to fetch my shoes. I told you he is very like a dog…). He never brings me one sneaker and one boot. He brings me two sneakers, or two boots.

Again, a dog would have difficulty with that. He can fetch your shoes, but you’d have to formally train him to understand “fetch my sneakers” vs “fetch my boots”. It would take WORK.

But Owl does it as a matter of course. Humans are clever.

And the way he generalizes! I made the mistake of teaching my dog to chase my ex-boyfriend’s cat under the command “get the cat”. When I got my own cat, that command didn’t work, because he didn’t understand that “cat” meant any cat other than ex-boyfriend’s cat. We had to teach him our new cat’s name, instead.

But the baby understands categories easily. When he was 12 months old I could say “where’s Beloved Dog?” and he would point to Beloved Dog, meanwhile identifying him as “dog”. Ditto for the cat. He knew that we had A DOG and A CAT but that they each have their own unique identifiers as well.

We taught him what a hippo was, and from then on he could identify all sorts of hippos in all sorts of books, even drawn by different artists. No dog could do that!

"hippo" is one of his favourite signs

Then again, Owl’s capacity for self-control, maturity, patience, obedience, following basic instructions, and potty training are completely eclipsed by our dog, and certainly his capacity for destruction rivals any dog I have ever met.

So I am putting him to the ultimate test.

I am going to try to teach both dog and Owl to read.

Well, not READ.

At least, not as those who use the alphabet would consider to be reading (Owl is trying to teach himself the alphabet, but has difficulty after “D”…).

I’m going to do the same with Beloved Dog. I borrowed flash cards from my friend and business partner who swear up and down that she has seen dogs learn to recognize words like “sit” and “down” and differentiate between them.

Just to be clear:

I am NOT pushing, pressuring, or otherwise making this un-fun for Owl. It’s just a game, something I am interested in to test his capacity for generalization and symbolic representation. I don’t believe that it will aid his development or help him school in the future.

Okay, following yesterday’s meme, here’s the video of me saying the words, followed by the answer key. Now, because I already knew the answers (PH tested me on these when we were geeking out over the weekend), I cheat a little bit and discuss the correct pronunciations in the video. So if you haven’t done it yet, be warned!

Answer key.

Click the links to go to Dictionary.com and hear the pronunciation, as well as to see notes on it. I put my screw-ups in red for you to admire!

It’s worth reading because there are some fun misunderstandings of common phrases, too. I couldn’t do that in a written meme, however, because writing it gives it away!

Many of the words this guy lists tend to be regional variations on pronouncing/slurring vowels, especially schwas (how’s that for a word that starts with four consonants?!). This is where Perfect Husband and I tended to differ. While he says things like “mannaise” and “fed-ral”, I say may-on-naise and fed-er-al, because I was raised to do so. Ditto with pronouncing “wh” words differently from “w” words, particularly words like “whet” or “which” that have a different meaning if pronounced “wet” or “witch”.

I tried to avoid many words like that, because I don’t think that’s mispronunciation so much as accent or quick speech.You’ll notice I didn’t pick on whether you said “clothes” or “close” in number 3. Bonus points if you actually pronounce the TH, though, especially if you’re a fast talker.

Also, I out-and-out disagree with some of his claims. He mentions “Tijuana” as a commonly mispronounced word, along with “forte” but Dictionary.com would disagree with him, and if we can’t trust Dictionary.com, who can we turn to in times of trial such as this?? I think that saying people mispronounce “Tijuana” is like complaining that we mispronounce “Paris”: even if it’s not how the French say it, it’s the English word for that city, you know? Besides, “Tijuana” is a slurring of Tia Juana (Aunt Jane) to begin with, even in Spanish.

Some of these “mispronunciations” are becoming accepted (as noted) but are still under debate, so I let them in – let the debate rage! Sadly, my mispronunciations are not under debate.

So… how did you guys do? Someone join me in educated embarrassment, and encourage your own readers to join you in shame as well! If there are lots of us, we could form a group of people who fight for the right to pronounce it res-pite!

The crib mattress arrived yesterday! I noticed that its label proudly advertises that it is “Phthalate compliant”. What does that mean? Does that mean it has phthalates, or doesn’t have phthalates? Or does it mean that it only has a certain arbitrarily-decided maximum number of phthalates?

Everything seems to be about the phthalates these days. Perfect Husband and I spotted the word on a bag of dog treats in the pet store a couple months ago and were immediately struck by the awesomeness of such an unpronounceable word. How many other words can you think of that begin with four (FOUR!) consonants?* In a world where people have difficulty with single syllable words like “you’re” and “their”, I feel that unleashing such a combination of letters on the unsuspecting public makes up for exposing us to the phthalates themselves.

Now that word seems to be everywhere. Everything must be chock full of phthalates because we’ve noticed quite a range of products announcing themselves “phthalate free”. Or maybe they were always free of phthalates, but are now promoting that fact, the way that high sugar cereals announce that they are “fat free”, as though they used to be up there with lard and sour cream, but are now the dietary equivalents of Kate Moss.

Anyhoo, we now have a fully functioning crib. Unfortunately, Babby has picked up a nasty cold, which I am now coming down with as well. I don’t know what sucks more about having a sick baby – dealing with those heart-rending coughs and snuffles, or trying to take care of a cranky baby when you feel as though someone stuffed a hammer up your left nostril.

Completed nursery FTW

Since he’s so wheezy and incapable of breathing, this seems like a poor time to try and transition him anywhere. He did sleep for two hours in the crib yesterday after I nursed him down in his snowsuit. I hung out in the room the whole time so that if he woke up I’d be right there. I didn’t want his first sleep there to be too disorienting. I have also been giving him playtime in there to help him feel familiar with it.

Today was a total no-go for sleeping there. He was so miserable and having so much trouble breathing that he woke up the second I started to lower him in. I don’t want him thinking of his crib as That Place Where I Can’t Breathe, so I just went back to my bedroom to nurse him down there as per usual.

His room is probably full of phthalates, anyway.

Sooky Babby is Sooky

* Yes, that is a challenge. They do exist, but “y” doesn’t count.

ETA: In answer to your unspoken question, I thought the birds were gone but I must be wrong, because the noises just started up again. An eagle-like cry followed by a squeaky hinge noise followed by a series of high pitched tweets that resemble maniacal laughter.